Alexander Column, Granite memorial in Rostov Oblast, Russia.
The Alexander Column is an 11-metre monument in Vitya Cherevichkin Children's Park, Rostov-on-Don, consisting of a single granite monolith on a square pedestal, topped by a bronze double-headed eagle resting on a globe. The pedestal bears two bronze plaques with pre-revolutionary inscriptions.
The column was inaugurated on 18 September 1894, the same day as the monument to Catherine II, to mark the 25th anniversary of Alexander II's accession. It was designed by the Nakhichevan architect N. N. Durbakh and made in S. A. Tonitto's workshop in Rostov. Its official name was "monument to Alexander II from the Nakhichevan Armenians".
The column was paid for by the Armenian community of Nakhichevan-on-Don, whose name survives in the Russian inscription on the pedestal: "From the Armenian community of Nakhichevan-on-Don, 25·IX·1894". The park around it was renamed Alexandrovsky for the occasion and is now the Vitya Cherevichkin Children's Park.
The column stands in Vitya Cherevichkin Children's Park in Rostov-on-Don's Proletarsky District, on a square pedestal inside a railed enclosure with a chain. Approach on foot through the park; the 11-metre granite shaft and the plaques on the pedestal are best read up close in daylight.
The column is the only pre-revolutionary monument in Rostov-on-Don that survived the Soviet period. The double-headed eagle and commemorative plaques were taken down after 1917 and only put back in 1994, for the monument's centenary.
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